'Prevention is much better than cure' (From Gazette Series)

'Prevention is much better than cure'

ON April 1 a Wotton-under-Edge businessman was sworn in as the new High Sheriff of Gloucestershire. Gazette reporter Sarah Carless met Michael Stone to talk about his appointment to the 1,000-year-old post.

MICHAEL Stone is honoured to have been 'pricked'(CORR) by the Queen and appointed High Sheriff of Gloucestershire.

"It is a great honour and I think Gloucestershire is a lovely county," he said.

"There is a terrific amount going on and that people don't realise is happening. One of my main objectives is to try and give this work a bit of publicity.

"Unless you find out about what is going on, you can't pass it on to other people. My objective is to do as much as I can for the county."

There are many areas of life in the county that Mr Stone wants to get involved in.

He said: "I very much want to be involved with law and order, drug rehabilitation and crime prevention, which I think is much better than curing them.

"I think the role covers a lot of things and the Prison Service is something else I want to get involved with because I am not sure it is operated in the best possible way and it could be improved.

"Another role is to look after the judiciary. They are pretty important people and have to be looked after. They are keen to show how the judges work and how the courts work.

"Getting involved with the municipal and county councils is going to be interesting because they take a lot of criticism and they do a lot of good work that they don't get credit for."

One of the many initiatives Mr Stone will be involved in during his year in office is Crime Beat.

"Crime Beat is one of the High Sheriff's duties and I am excited to get into it. I am chairman of the committee during my time in office and it is my job to collect money, which the committee then assigns to people who run initiatives to keep people away from crime and give them something else to do. We get letters from people telling us what they are doing and we decide which ones to give the money to.

"One works quite closely with the police, particularly the Chief Constable. It will be interesting to get to know him and to hear about the problems they face. One also does a certain amount of work with neighbouring counties."

Mr Stone is also keen to get involved with education and wants to visit schools across the county. Another of his roles as High Sheriff is to raise money for charity.

He continued: "I will be raising money for local good causes. One of those is the Gloucestershire Community Foundation, which encourages people to endow money, which they invest and it gets given out. The second is the Cotswold Care Hospice, which has a huge project and I shall certainly be directing as much funding as I can to that."

Mr Stone's diary is filling fast with engagements - something that he is looking forward to.

He said: "One gets asked to do a huge amount of things - it is a very busy role. I am going to throw myself into the role wholeheartedly."